“Who are you?” asks Max.
“Saudi secret service,” says the man quietly. “Take these guns. That door leads to a staircase. Go up the staircase and you will find the woman and your diamond. Be quick. The others are in conference, deciding what to say on your beheading video.”
Max and Harry find themselves holding pistols, the closest either has come to a gun other than a hunting shotgun; they smell of oil.
“The staircase now… quick,” the man says, as if sensing their bewilderment. “The diamond is in a safe above the bed. The number to open the safe is 1438… that’s the date in the Islamic calendar…”
Harry, who has imagined the world watching his death on the Internet – perhaps ‘favouriting’ it and forwarding it to friends – wastes no more time.
“Come on,” he says to Max, and trots up the staircase. If he is going to die, it’s going to be like a lion rather than a sheep.
He pushes open a door at the top and finds himself in a bedroom. There’s a low double bed, on one side of which is sitting Aafia’s boyfriend – and two single mattresses. The safe is, as their saviour had indicated, above the bed, but it’s open and, as far as Harry can tell, empty. The younger man with the scar, his would-be executioner, is standing by the window, seemingly sending a text on his mobile. He stops and throws the phone on to the double bed.
“Don’t move… put up your hands,” says Harry, just as Max arrives in the doorway. Max points his gun at the boyfriend.
“Where’s Aafia?” asks Harry, scooping up the mobile from the bed. The man with the scar scowls, the first expression he’s seen on his face “Where’s the fucking diamond? I give you five seconds… one… two…three…” Neither men speak or move.
“Four… five… Right you cunt… you’re the first to die,” says Harry levelling the tip of his gun with the scarred youth’s torso. He starts squeezing the trigger.
“Stop, Harry… stop. Stop!”
It’s Aafia, who has appeared just behind Max at the top of the staircase. She has in her hand their passports, the bag with their mobile phones and, looking as beautiful and orange and otherworldly as they remember it – their diamond.
“Follow me.”
* * *
They charge down a staircase behind Aafia, and through a door that leads on to the street – their faces bathed in a sunlight neither man expected to see or feel again.
Tariq is standing by the door with his back pressed up against the wall. Harry instinctively raises his gun, but Aafia shouts for him to put it down. Aafia and Tariq exchange some words in Arabic. Tariq brushes the top of Aafia’s arm and heads off.
“This way,” she says calmly to Max and Harry, and now Aafia is rushing up the street, her haste alarming enough for Max and Harry to run as hard as they can. Behind them they hear shouting, and several gunshots in quick succession.
“Hide your guns,” Aafia shouts as she turns another corner, recognising the cafe frontage where a small crowd is gathered around the black Mercedes. The car alarm is going off with a piercing ululation. Both men push their guns warily down the front of their trousers, Harry keeping his cupped so it doesn’t slip down a trouser leg. Christ, he thinks, I hope it doesn’t go off.
The crowd, mainly youngsters, part as Aafia arrives and then Max and finally Harry. The blacked-out driver’s window has been smashed and a policeman has his head thrust inside. He withdraws it as Aafia approaches and starts talking animatedly to him in Italian.
There follows a conversation that neither of the Englishmen can follow, but is apparently fascinating to the crowd gathered round the car. From time to time Aafia points to Max and Harry, and the crowd’s eyes swivel as one in their direction. Is she telling the cop that she’s been kidnapped and that he needs his help? Max looks at the gun in the policeman’s holster.
Max appears to cup his balls, whereas in fact he’s trying not to let his own pistol fall down his trousers. Harry keeps an anxious lookout in the direction from where they have just come, but nobody seems to be following.
Finally the policeman starts nodding vigorously, saying, “Si, signora, si, si…” and Aafia beckons Max and Harry over.
“Get in and drive,” she says. “I’ve told him that nothing has been stolen and I’ve reported it to the car hire people and that we’re returning there straight away. Now, just drive.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
Omar pulls aside the bedroom curtain. The Saudi woman is talking to her Libyan boyfriend, the British men standing back looking shit scared. She gives the Libyan’s arm a quick squeeze and they are off in opposite directions. Omar knows instinctively whom he has to follow, and charges down the staircase with demonic speed. Behind him, from inside the compound, there is shouting and some gunfire.
The Libyan is walking fast, but turning and spotting Omar he breaks into a run. But Omar is fast and fit and soon makes up ground. He never trusted the woman or the boyfriend, they just didn’t smell right. And he knows the Libyan followed him into Rome the other day, when he went to visit the kid in the hotel.
Omar shoulder-barges Tariq against the wall and, as the Libyan stumbles, he hammers the side of his fist into his temple. The Libyan’s eyes go blank, his mouth opens as if to say something, and then he drops like a sack of wheat onto the dusty yard floor.
Omar looks around for a weapon but can’t see anything to hand, so he lifts Tariq by the armpits, sizes up his lolling head, and puts all his strength into another hammer blow to the temple. He recalls his unarmed combat instructor, a Chechen who had been in Spetsnaz, the Russian Special Forces, teaching him that a blow like this to the temple could easily kill a man.
The Libyan doesn’t make a sound as he hits him, and there is more shouting inside the compound, so Omar decides it’s time to make his departure. He jogs to the side door that leads into the garage. Everything he needs is in the Audi.
The keys are hanging where he left them, and with a click of the button the garage doors start to lift as Omar secures his seatbelt. As he noses the car forward one of his men, Sabir, staggers across the courtyard holding his stomach. Blood is seeping across his shirt and he is waving his gun erratically. Omar jogs over to the wooden double doors that lead on to the street, unbolts them and pulls them wide, and jumps back into the Audi. He pulls into the street with a screech of acceleration.
He drives quickly for several streets and then slows down and takes a steady pace towards the ring road. No time to think right now – he’ll work out what’s gone wrong later.
Just before the ring road there’s a heavily shaded rest area, and Omar pulls in, stops the engine and gets out. In the boot are several pairs of number plates, one of which he selects. These are the car’s real ones.
Back in the driver’s seat he pulls up his phone, calls up the GPS tracking device he has placed in the Englishmen’s Mercedes and logs on. After a short delay he sees where they’re headed. Due north.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
They’ve been driving for just over four hours – four hours in which Aafia has sat motionless on the back seat, her long black hair dancing in the wind that’s coming in through the smashed driver’s window, while she stares blindly out of her side window, not uttering a word.
Harry has her covered with the gun, while Max drives, occasionally picking fragments of shattered glass from the window frame. The exit signs for Florence have long ago stopped and now a sign on the autostrada says it is 250 kilometres to Milan, and the satnav agrees. Max glances at his watch.
“We’ll take the Como route into Switzerland,” he says. “Best avoid France; France is officially at war, or something, or a state of emergency because of all the terrorist attacks. And apparently the French borders are tough these days anyway because of all the migrant boat people coming into Italy. The Frogs don’t want them.”
“The Swiss won’t either, surely?” says Harry. “They’re not even in the EU.”
“According to Google, they’re signed up to whatever that ‘o
pen border’ agreement is called.”
“Yes, but nobody has open borders any more… not since Paris,” says Max.
Now Aafia turns and looks Harry in the eye.
“I won’t give you any trouble,” she says with a softness that belies the fierceness of her stare, and then looks away out of the window again. Harry’s arm is aching and he lowers the gun for a moment. “Why would I have given you the diamond and the way out? I could easily have reported you to that cop.”
“Why should we trust you?” he asks. “You were happy to see someone chop off our heads earlier today.”
Aafia makes a clicking noise with her tongue. “No one was going to chop off your head,” she mutters as if to herself, still looking out of the window. “Well, perhaps Omar wanted to, but we wouldn’t have let it get that far.”
“Who’s Omar?”
“He’s the cunt with the scar.”
Max lets out a laugh, and Harry joins in. “Did you just call him a cunt?”
“And he is,” says Aafia.
Harry levels the gun again. Now the immediate fear has passed – the survival instinct – would he use it? Could he? He tries to re-ignite his anger.
“I thought we were going to die,” he hisses with a vehemence that surprises him.
“Please put the gun down,” says Aafia.
“Er… no, I won’t,” says Harry.
“Put it down,” says Max. “Let’s hear what she has to say.”
Aafia gives a little nod. Harry lowers the pistol.
“I’m sorry if you were frightened, but you were never in any danger.”
“Sure looked like a fuck of a lot of danger to me,” says Harry, who feels that his survival somehow depends on remaining angry.
“We wouldn’t have let them kill you.”
“Who’s we…? Who’s them…?”
“Can I have some water?”
Max nods and Harry passes her a small water bottle he had fortunately bought at the airport, taking a firmer grip on the gun at the same time.
“What do you think this is all about?” asks Aafia, before gulping greedily.
“I haven’t got a fucking clue,” says Harry. “You’re a spoilt little rich girl who’s got mixed up with a bad lot and you stole our diamond to fund them.”
Aafia gives a little laugh. “If only it was so easy.”
“Enlighten us.”
“You know about my father… you know he is a powerful man. Let me tell you about me.”
Max and Harry say nothing and Aafia continues.
“I have two brothers and six sisters, or rather two brothers and six half-sisters. I’m the oldest girl and my father’s favourite. You know you can tell, can’t you?”
“Yes,” says Max emphatically. It’s suddenly like they are three young friends talking freely, perhaps the morning after a party or a wedding.
“Except it’s the other brothers and sisters who can usually tell,” continues Max. “Nicky was my mother’s favourite.”
Harry tries not to look at Max. Aafia is still watching the passing verges of the autostrada.
“Anyway, he always kept me close. My half-sisters were all sent home and had a strict upbringing, but me and my brothers we went to America with him – I lived just outside Washington for the first eight years of my life. Then we came to Europe – an international school in Brussels for two years, then Switzerland for a year, and then when I was eleven I was sent to a jolly old British boarding school for girls.”
She is staring out of the window all the time as she says all this, as if recalling a dream.
“Which one? Do I know it?” asks Max. Harry can’t take in the weird normality of the conversation. Max sounds like he’s chatting in the pub rather than driving for his life with a suspected terrorist in the back of the car.
“Firle Manor? You might have heard of Wycombe Abbey – we played them at netball and lacrosse.”
“My sister Tash considered Wycombe Abbey,” says Max.
“Anyway, there were lots of foreign girls at Firle – I think we kept it afloat. There were other Arab girls too, but I was too westernised for them and used to hang out with a bunch of Russian and Italian girls, and one or two English. A naughty crowd. When I was fifteen I was caught drinking and that was the end of that.”
“What happened then?” Max is really enjoying this story, thinks Harry, while he looks for inconsistencies.
“My father took me away, and I was sent to Jeddah in Saudi for the next three years. My God… ha—” She stops.
“A bit of a shock to the system, eh?” says Max.
“You don’t know how much. I went to live with my half-sisters and my father’s second wife in a compound on the edge of town. It was like a prison. I had to wear a headscarf around the home, and the hijab when I went out. Not that I went out very often, and never alone. My sisters and I and even my stepmother had to have a male to accompany us anywhere – to the shops even; it was usually one of my stepmother’s many brothers. Do you know what hijab means? It means barrier or partition – like you weren’t wanted, like you were separated off.”
“We see it every day in Mayfair,” says Harry. It seems like another life now, the hedge fund, the days of sitting at his desk while the money rolled in; one that might never have really happened.
“My half-sisters were all right, but rather limited; they knew nothing but this weird captive life. I tried to make the most of it and actually even felt a bit relieved not to always have the latest fashions. I even did quite well at college. But it was so restricting. I remember when I was seventeen I wanted driving lessons and was told I could forget that idea at once. And if I took the bus I had to run the risk of being groped – even when my uncle was sitting there, just across the aisle. Mind you, I think given half a chance…”
“Go on,” says Harry. Aafia turns to look at him, with that amused, half-mocking look he had first noticed in the restaurant in London.
“You want to hear more about me being groped by my uncle?”
Harry tries not to blush, but can feel his cheeks redden. “No. We want to know how you got from there to here.” She turns back to the window, speaking towards the blackened pane as if towards the grill in a priest’s confessional.
“I wanted to go to university and I wanted to do it in Europe or America, not in some Muslim country. And I knew my father missed me… you could tell in the tone of his phone-calls and letters… and since he lived in England, I applied to colleges in London and got offered a place at the LSE.”
“The London School of Economics,” says Max, once again engaged with the story. What a jolly drive they are having across Italy. Harry instinctively looks out of the back window to see if he recognises any of the cars following them.
“Yes, the London School of Economics. I studied politics and economics – my father let me do it, which surprised me at the time. Perhaps not now. I think he had plans for me; I think he still has plans for me.
“You know the first thing I did when I got to London? I went shopping at Selfridges and booked some driving lessons. But I kept my headscarf for a while; it seemed to make people interested in me at college, I’m not too vain to admit. And I met some pretty cool people – radical feminist Muslims, can you believe; and Islamic fundamentalists – the eradicate Israel, drive out Christians, reclaim the eternal truth of the Quran types – all varieties in between.
“In the holidays I lived with my father in the country house that you broke into.” This was accompanied by another amused look at Harry. He felt himself becoming aroused. “A weird double life. My father used to like hearing about all my friends at university, and then I realised…”
“You were spying for him,” says Harry.
“I think so,” says Aafia, this time looking at him without mockery. “Not in any specific way, you understand; he just wanted to know current waves of opinion amongst westernised Muslims – Saudis in particular. But then something happened, the political became personal; I
became involved with a bunch of feminists – men too. What’s that: a ‘meninist’?”
It was first time Max or Harry had heard her attempt to crack a joke.
“My father had bought me a large flat in Kensington and we started to use it as a safe house for female Muslim students who were being abused in some way. And so it grew. I came to realise that the whole Islamic fundamentalist thing… the interpretation of Islam known as Wahhabism, and that means Saudi Arabia and Isis in Syria, Iraq and Libya, is sending women back to the Stone Age.”
“You’re not Isis then?”
“No, fuck, we’re the very opposite of Isis.”
“You’re trying to tell us you’re some sort of radical feminist do-gooders,” says Harry. Max glances across at him; Harry isn’t sure whether he has understood.
“No, no,” laughs Aafia. “We’ve gone way beyond that now.”
“And what about your boyfriend? Your father doesn’t seem very keen to call him his son-in-law.”
“He’s not my boyfriend. My father knows that.”
There is a silence. “What is he then?” says Harry.
“Tariq and I met at the LSE. His father was in Gaddafi’s government for a while, but became a dissident… moved to London when Tariq was about fourteen. He was my first proper boyfriend – we became lovers in my first year.”
She looks at Harry and Harry finds he can’t return her stare. He glances over at the satnav. Two hundred and thirty kilometres to Milan.
“His one dream was for Gaddafi to be overthrown and for him to return home and help turn Libya into a social democracy,” says Aafia, turning to stare out of the window again. “So when what you call the Arab Spring happened in Libya in 2011 we both went over to try and see what we could do. With all the country’s oil reserves and only six million people we thought we’d create the new Dubai – a Dubai with equal rights for women.” She gives a dry little laugh.
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